Page 105 of The Business of Blood

I’d let Dr. Phillips down, and he’d not mentioned a word about it.

What a dear man.

When the weather turned, no corpses landed for me to clean.

Mary Jean showed up on my doorstep with little Teagan. I’d almost forgotten about her.

Polly was certainly grateful for the help, as she had been nervous to tell us that she was engaged to be married and might not work for much longer.

Nola took to Mary right away as the girl was both gullible and fanciful enough to see spirits in shifting shadows. She even blamed one of Nola’s wayward guides when she knocked over a crystal dish, and we let her.

Teagan was a happy baby, if louder than I often wished. Some children screamed their discomfort, and she certainly did that. But she yelled her delight, as well. She warbled, cooed, burped, and yawped just about every moment she wasn’t asleep.

Sometimes, the sounds of the child reminded me of all the infant ashes shoveled from Katherine Riley’s fireplace. Sweet, chubby Teagan could have been one of them.

If Aidan hadn’t done what he did.

Mary was both kind and careful around me. She suspected my grief. I saw it mirrored in her eyes when she wasn’t trying to appear chipper.

She’d lost her husband not so long ago. She spoke to him when she cleaned sometimes, when she thought she was alone. She nagged him. Berated him for leaving her. For being careless when she’d warned him not to. She told him stories about Teagan. Told him she missed him.

Funny. I’d never speak to Aidan whether he haunted me or not. It was believed that ghosts were tethered to a moment in time. Or a place. Or, if they were very unlucky, a person.

I never felt Aidan’s presence. And, I imagined, if anything of his spirit remained in this world, it wouldn’t be condemned to revisit me.

He’d be in America, somewhere. On the bloody ground of that village. Tormented by the souls of the innocent.

I read the paper every day. Only because I had one thing left to fear…

A murder in the East End. A mutilated corpse.

A victim of Jack the Ripper now that he’d been coaxed out of hiding.

He was still out there, I knew. Watching me? I almost felt sorry for him. How bored he must be.

He never sent mehiscondolences.

Or did he? Hidden in the notes of another?

One morning, Mary brought me breakfast on a tray. “Thought I’d brighten such a dreary morning wif a flower, miss.” She drew the drapes, and I moaned at her. “It’s going to snow, I fink.”

Let it. What did I care?

She bustled out, not waiting for a thank you, and for whatever reason, I rolled toward the tray. Butter actually smelled good this morning, and my stomach made a rude noise.

I stared at the flower in the vase as I gobbled the toast and tea like a doomed man would his last meal. A lily of the valley. Trimmed from a hot house, obviously, and drooping like shy little church bells. A waterfall of white.

I washed and dressed early, for once, and arranged my hair, surprised that I’d not forgotten how.

A sudden and intense need to unburden myself drove me into the cold of the approaching winter. God help me, a church was the last thing I wanted to see.

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

I’d lived my life for so long with one purpose in mind: to find Jack the Ripper.

A body needed a purpose in order to keep on ticking. So many people worked themselves to exhaustion, only to die the moment they retired.

Because what did they have left to do?